The Now: Anna Bower's Signal Exchange with Lindsey Halligan

Summary

The Lawfare Podcast

Episode: The Now: Anna Bower's Signal Exchange with Lindsey Halligan
Date: October 21, 2025
Host: Ben Wittes (Lawfare Editor-in-Chief)
Guest: Anna Bower (Lawfare Senior Editor)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Lawfare's new livestream series "The Now," Ben Wittes and Anna Bower delve into the extraordinary and highly unusual Signal exchange between Anna and interim United States Attorney Lindsey Halligan. Bower describes how Halligan, the lead prosecutor in the high-profile Letitia James case, reached out to her unprompted via Signal about some of Anna's tweets regarding recent developments in the case. The conversation explores media ethics, government transparency, journalistic integrity, and the highly unconventional nature of Halligan's outreach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How the Correspondence Began

• Setting the Scene ([02:15]):

  • Anna recounts being approached by Halligan on a rare afternoon off while catching up on the Letitia James indictment news.
  • Halligan’s Signal DM came unsolicited:

    "It's not every day that I get messages on Signal unsolicited from the top prosecutor in Virginia who the president seems to have installed to prosecute some of his perceived political enemies." – Anna Bauer ([02:45])

  • Anna initially suspected the message was a hoax.

• Verifying Identity ([03:38]):

  • Anna and Lindsey had met briefly years prior at a hearing involving Trump's legal team, giving Anna a way to test if the Signal user was authentic.
  • Halligan correctly answered a challenge question about their first meeting, lending credibility to her identity.

2. The Content of Halligan’s Outreach ([04:45])

• Halligan was spurred by Anna's tweets—not reporting—about the Letitia James case, particularly by Anna’s summary and legal analysis taken from New York Times reporting on grand jury testimony.
• Halligan did not approach the New York Times, only Anna, raising immediate questions about her motivations.
• Anna notes the unusualness:

  "...one of the first things that was really unusual about this is that...it wasn't even my own reporting...it was tweets that I posted about someone else's reporting." – Anna Bauer ([06:22])

3. Substance and Tone of the Interaction

• Halligan appeared dissatisfied with Anna’s summary/analysis but was not specific about what was factually inaccurate.

  "I'm frankly not entirely sure what she was trying to tell me...I kept following up to say, what specifically is wrong? Because if it is wrong, I am happy to fix it." – Anna Bauer ([10:28])

• Halligan pointed Anna toward the indictment without clarifying her objection.

• Ben Wittes highlights the ambiguity:

  "...was she upset at you about a factual question or...your characterization of it?" – Ben Wittes ([11:53])

• Anna recounts how Halligan sometimes suggested Anna was wrong, other times warned her credibility was at stake, but never clarified her critiques.

4. On- and Off-the-Record Protocols ([21:23])

• The entire conversation occurred without any discussion or agreement regarding off-the-record communication.

  "...the whole of this conversation...she never even attempted to have a discussion about the basis on which we're speaking...I would find it really surprising beyond belief if Lindsey Halligan is not aware of how media relationships work." – Anna Bauer ([21:44])

• Only after Lawfare contacted the DOJ did Halligan retroactively declare the exchange "off the record," arguing that using Signal and disappearing messages implied confidentiality.

  "You don't get to retroactively say that something was off the record. You have to have an agreement with the journalist." – Anna Bauer ([23:23])

• Wittes underscores the impropriety and strangeness:

  "Government business on your personal devices...[and] disappearing messages...which are, you know, these are government records that you're supposed to be retaining." – Ben Wittes ([24:14])

5. Ethical and Legal Implications ([28:29])

• Both host and guest, and their contacts in journalism and prosecution, stress this kind of prosecutor outreach is "unheard of."

  "I've been doing this for 30 years. I've never heard of an interaction like this...Nobody could cite an example of something like this, right?" – Ben Wittes ([28:29])

• Anna reaffirms, among those consulted, "no one could cite an example of something like this" ([29:57]).
• Standard journalistic and prosecutorial protocols were not followed, potentially jeopardizing prosecutorial credibility and legal process.

6. Personal Dynamics & Reporting Approach ([32:05], [33:05])

• Ben notes the odd dynamic: Halligan seemed to expect Anna to act in a particular way, despite a distant, one-off prior interaction.

  "She really doesn't seem to like you very much and I, I hope that doesn't bother you too much." – Ben Wittes ([32:50])

• Anna:

  "I think it's interesting because at times she seemed to suggest that she expected a lot of me or a lot more of me. But then at other times...it was really unclear to me if she...had ever even read...what kind of reporting I do..." ([34:37])

• Anna’s reporting emphasizes public documents and proceedings over access-based scoops.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Anna on verifying Halligan:

  "I put [her number] in my phone, went back to our existing conversation and suddenly her phone number showed up. So we were...very confident...it really was Lindsey Halligan." ([15:03])

• Halligan’s retroactive ‘off-the-record’ claim:

  "By the way, everything that I said was off the record. And that is just simply not how it works.” – Anna Bauer ([22:30])

• On using Signal/disappearing messages as justification:

  "It's citing evidence...that you're not supposed to be doing...you're not supposed to be, you know, using disappearing messages...these are government records that you're supposed to be retaining." – Ben Wittes ([24:14])

• On how unusual the outreach was:

  "I've never met or described anybody else having such an interaction. I've never heard a journalist talk about a prosecutor...doing something like this." – Ben Wittes ([28:32])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• How the correspondence began and authentication steps: [02:15]–[05:36]
• What triggered Halligan’s outreach: [06:13]–[10:02]
• Ambiguity of Halligan’s objections: [11:53]–[14:07]
• Forensic process of identity verification: [15:03]
• DOJ confirmation and Halligan’s retroactive off-the-record claim: [20:16]–[24:14]
• Discussion on professional protocols, legal community reaction: [28:29]–[31:16]
• Exploring the personal dynamic and Anna’s reporting approach: [32:05]–[34:53]
• Closing remarks, Anna’s next steps: [36:09]–[36:44]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare inside look at an anomalous and ethically fraught interaction between a senior prosecutor and a legal journalist. Through Anna’s meticulous recounting and Ben’s probing questions, listeners gain insight into media-prosecutor relations, the stringent norms that govern them, and what it means when those norms are disregarded. The conversation underscores the importance of journalistic transparency and government accountability, and the sobering risks when precedent is ignored.

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Further Reading:
Anna Bower’s original article on the signal exchange is available at Lawfare. Subscribe to Lawfare’s YouTube and Substack for future episodes and analyses.

Transcript

[Ben Wittes]

Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?

[Anna Bauer]

Thank you so much.

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[Anna Bauer]

Foreign.

[Ben Wittes]

It'S lawfair Live the now. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor in Chief of Lawfare. On October 20, I sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bauer to discuss her remarkable article about how interim United States Attorney Lindsey Halligan reached out to her on Signal. And the conversation that followed. We were live on YouTube. Anna, you've had quite a week.

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah, it's been a week.

[Ben Wittes]

And so if you are watching this, you probably know that the reason it has been a week is that Anna has been texting with the one and only Lindsey Halligan, who approached you, apropos of nothing, last Saturday. So let's just start at the beginning. How did your correspondence with Lindsay Halligan begin?

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah, so it was a Saturday afternoon around 1:20. I was. It was one of those rare days when I actually was taking some time off and I'd been kind of reading the news, tweeting a little bit. I was doing some tweeting and catching up on the Letitia James indictment, which had just been handed up on Thursday. And of course, the prosecutor handling it is Lindsey Halligan, the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. And as I'm sitting there, you know, about to take a break and watch some tv, I get a signal DM request from someone who is calling themselves Lindsey Halligan. Now, Ben, I don't know about you, but it's not every day that I get messages on Signal unsolicited from the top prosecutor in Virginia who the president seems to have installed to prosecute some of his perceived political enemies. But for me, that was very surprising. I thought it was a hoax. At First, I assumed that it was not the real Lindsey Halligan, because on signal, you don't necessarily see someone's phone number on the Internet.

[Ben Wittes]

Nobody knows you're a dog. And on nobody knows if you're really Lindsay Halligan or not.

[Anna Bauer]

No one knows who you really are. So. But. But what I did know is that I had met Lindsey Halligan about three years ago when I first started covering the Trump criminal cases. At the time, for Lawfare, I had gone to a hearing in West Palm beach before Judge Eileen Cannon. For folks who are the real nerds who are listening, you might remember the special master hearing before Judge Cannon, which was over documents that were seized at Mar A Lago during the FBI's search there. And I went to dinner that night and happened to run into Lindsey Halligan and Jim Trustee, who were on Trump's legal team at the time. So I introduced myself to them. You know, we briefly chatted. Years later, when this supposed Lindsey Halligan person got in touch with me, I thought, oh, that's something that maybe the real Lindsey Halligan would. Would remember. And that's a way I could authenticate or at least get a good sense of whether or not I'm dealing with someone who is a real person here. And so I asked, where did we first meet? And immediately the person on the other end responded and said the correct answer of who they were with, where we met. And so that gave me a sense that, oh, maybe I really am dealing with the real Lindsey Halligan here. And so we. We started talking, and it turns out that what she wanted to talk about was some tweets that I posted about an hour before that were about the Letitia James case. It was about a New York Times article that was about grand jury testimony in the Letitia James case. And I had summarized, you know, that testimony in a tweet. And then Lindsey Halligan was apparently not too happy with some of the tweets and the way that I summarized that testimony as reported by the New York Times.

[Ben Wittes]

All right, so there's so much here that I don't quite know where to start. But let's start with something you just said at the end, which is that she approached you because she didn't like it wasn't reporting you done. It was your tweets about the New York Times's story about the Letitia James grand jury testimony. Did she approach the New York Times to complain about the story?

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah, Ben, look, there's a few really unusual things about this whole interaction. And in other circumstances, the pure Fact of a prosecutor approaching a reporter or initiating a conversation on signal isn't necessarily unusual, right? That is that that kind of thing happens. But one of the first things that was really unusual about this is that, as you mentioned, it wasn't even my own reporting that she was approaching me about. It was tweets that I posted about someone else's reporting. Specifically, the New York Times is reporting of this grand jury testimony. So that's one of the really strange elements here. She. She was clearly not pleased with what I had tweeted. One of them was pure summary. And then another one, which I, you know, the one she seemed to be focused on was the summary one. But then also, it's possible she was focused on a different one that was kind of more of an analytical point in which I, you know, said, I think that this testimony would, you know, something to the effect of. Would tend to be exculpatory for Letitia James because it shows that one of the central claims in the indictment, you know, may not be as alleged, which was that she intended to. To use the home as a rental investment property, as the indictment puts it, as opposed to what she said she was using for, which was second home. I thought that the testimony as reported by the New York Times, which was about her niece testifying that she had lived there for many years and did not pay rent, I thought that kind of undermined the idea that Letitia James was primarily using this to collect rent money. And, you know, look, I'm a reporter, but also a legal analyst, so I make these kinds of points about other people's reporting and how they may affect the legal case all the time. So I just didn't think anything of it. The second thing, in addition to the fact that this was about someone else's reporting that I'll mention that was unusual, is that the story for the New York Times I was tweeting about and that I was really focused on was about grand jury testimony. And it's quite unusual for a prosecutor to even get anywhere near conversations around grand jury matters because of various policies and laws that prohibit the disclosure by a prosecutor of grand jury matters.

[Ben Wittes]

There's another unusual thing, which is normally it's one thing if, you know, a prosecutor and a reporter have a preexisting relationship, or if you're talking about a policy matter. I mean, senior Justice Department lawyers and reporters talk all the time about policy questions about internal Justice Department infighting or disputes. Nobody would think twice about her, say, texting you about her battles with Todd Blanch for Example.

[Anna Bauer]

But whereas this was about an ongoing prosecution, this is about a specific.

[Ben Wittes]

It's about a specific case. It's about somebody else's reporting about a specific case. Did she ever tell you what the New York Times supposedly got wrong and why she was talking to you about it?

[Anna Bauer]

No. So. So she approached me and is objecting to something that I have said in this tweet in which I'm summarizing this New York Times reporting. You know, been. It's a complicated thing to parse, but I will say that, you know, it's not clear to me exactly what she was saying was wrong. You know, I have a few maybe, ideas of what it could be about, though. It seemed to me that she was responding in some way to the summary of the grand jury testimony, which was that the niece said she had lived at the home for many years without paying rent. You know, she. She points me at one point to the indictment and says, you should look at the indictment. It says that Letitia James reported thousands of dollars in rental income on our tax forms. That's what she was alluding to in the indictment. And so that seemed to me to be a way of directly responding to the. What I had summarized in the tweet. Beyond that, though, I'm. I'm frankly not entirely sure what she was trying to tell me. You know, I kept following up to say, what specifically is wrong? Because if it is wrong, like. Because, look, if it is wrong, I am happy to fix it. You know, we all care about accuracy. I. Whenever I make a mistake on something, even if it's like a typo, I will, you know, be. I get so mad at myself. And I would have been happy to correct it, but she never told me what it was that was wrong. And so that was strange.

[Ben Wittes]

And it was not. I gotta say, it was never clear to me from reading the texts whether she was upset at you about something, some factual matter that she thought the New York Times had gotten wrong, or whether she was upset at you because you had described it as an analytical matter, as exculpatory. Right. There's. There's a. There's an ambiguity to me as to whether she was upset at you about a factual question or whether she was upset at you about your characterization of it.

[Anna Bauer]

I mean, I. I think that maybe that's right. I will say, though, I did directly ask her at one point. I said, you know, I made it clear I was basing my tweet off of what the New York Times reported. Did they get something wrong? And she Responds, yes, but you went with it without fact checking anything. So I took it to be a fact that she was quibbling in some way with the factual assertions that were being made as opposed to analytical assertions. But then you're right, she does at times more broadly seem to refer to my reporting and say that I am in particular, you know, just really off. And, you know, my credibility is going to be on the line because the evidence is going to come out and prove me wrong. Which, like that may be like, you know, I'm very clear that I don't know everything in this case. But part of a prosecutor's role is to communicate to the public, sometimes through an indictment, through something like a speaking indictment, maybe when you have a high profile case that's against a public official like Letitia James. You know, to me, looking at the indictment, it's really hard to have much confidence in the case that was built because it just doesn't tell you much. And there's a lot of public evidence that very much suggests that it is not a particularly strong case.

[Ben Wittes]

All right, so let's talk about how you verified that this was Lindsey Halligan. Let's go through a little bit the forensic process you described. Step one, which was asked, giving her effectively a challenge question and trying to demand that she identify the circumstance in which you and she had met. That got us through most of the week in the sense that we were then working on the assumption that we were actually dealing with Lindsey Halligan. But it's not really good enough to go to press with. Right, Because I don't know, the Russians could have hacked her email and posed as her. Right, the. And maybe from the emails known about her one interaction with you. How did we know that this was Lindsey Halligan?

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah, so the way that we knew that this is Lindsey Halligan is that we obtained her phone number, her real phone number, not just, you know, Signal username or whatever, and I put it in my phone contacts. And for people who are familiar with Signal, which is a application for messaging that journalists often use to communicate with their sources, it has a function where you can, for example, set disappearing messages, which notably is one of the things that Lindsey Halligan did here immediately when we started the conversation. But with Signal, you know, people can reach out to you through a username. You don't exactly know if it's linked to their phone number, but if you get their phone number and put it in your phone and then you go back to your messaging and you have an existing conversation with them, it'll then show their phone number, you know, associated with that conversation. And so that's exactly what we did here where we got her phone number. I put it in my phone, went back to our existing conversation and suddenly her phone number showed up. So we were, we were very confident that by the time we were ready to publish the story that it really was Lindsey Halligan.

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[Ben Wittes]

So there were two more pieces of evidence that cropped up today in response to your approach to the Justice Department. The first is that the Justice Department confirmed it, and if you look at the Justice Department's statement, they acknowledge that these are her that this is an exchange between you and Lindsey Halligan. And the second is that shortly after you sent that the Lindsay Halligan who had been ghosting you for the last several days, that thread suddenly came alive. And so you sent a, you sent an email to the United States Department of Justice and you got a response on this signal thread from Lindsey Halligan, which is pretty conclusive. So what did Lindsey Halligan say when she, you know, rose from obscurity to, to chat with you again?

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah. So I, I guess this kind of brings you back to one of the other surprising things about this conversation that we missed earlier when we were which is that the whole of this conversation, the entirety of it, you know, after she approached me, she never even attempted to have a discussion about the basis on which we're speaking. And what I mean by that is that, you know, for people who are used to engaging with the media as Lindsey Halligan, Shirley is, you know, she was on Trump's criminal defense team for several years. She was his personal lawyer. She, I believe she has a degree in broadcast journalism. She beyond that, you know, worked in the White House and Then now is one of the most high profile prosecutors in the country. You really like? Look, I don't know, but I would find it really surprising beyond belief if Lindsey Halligan is not aware of how media relationships work. And usually the rule is that, you know, if you want to talk off the record, which means that you want to talk in a way that is confidential so that the reporter doesn't use your name, doesn't use the information in their story, then you say, hey, is it okay if we talk off the record? There are different variations of this, you know, on background means you can talk, but they can't like, specifically use your name, although they can allude to or use the information. Regardless, regardless, the rule is you have to have an agreement. Everyone who works in this space knows this for, you know, sophisticated media engagement. People know this, and yet Lindsey Halligan never had a discussion with me about it. So we were on the record as far as I was concerned. And then we, you know, go are about to publish this story. We get a response from the Justice Department. Then we get Lindsey Halligan, who reinitiates our signal conversation after several days of, of silence. And she says, by the way, everything that I said was off the record. And that is just simply not how it works. Ben, you and I both know that very well. You know, you don't get to retroactively say that something was off the record. You have to have an agreement with the journalist. And, and so, you know, I said, I'm sorry, that's not how this works. And she continued to insist that things were off the record. At one point she said, you know, it was obvious that it was off the record, it was on signal, and disappearing messages were, were set.

[Ben Wittes]

Which is, by the way, a very weird thing to say because it's citing evidence. I mean, Justice Department officials are not supposed to be doing business on signal, which is not allowed on Justice Department devices, as far as I know. And you're not supposed to be doing business on your personal device. Government business on your personal devices. And you're not supposed to be, you know, using disappearing messages, which are, you know, these are government records that you're supposed to be retaining. And so she's using evidence of, you know, hey, look, I'm, I'm using signal, which I'm not supposed to be doing, and I'm using disappearing messages, which I'm not supposed to be using as evidence that you were off the record, which is not the way it works. So, so here's my question about this, and I, I, I You know, some people look at this and say, hey, wait a minute, did Anna Bauer burn a source here? And I just want to say, so I have supervised this reporting from minutes after you first got a text message from her. And I was shocked that she never said a word about what basis you were talking on. And so I could only think of a couple things that are, are, could mitigate it from her point of view. One is if she knew you really well and there were an assumption, you know, sometimes you have a relationship with somebody and the relationship is deep enough and there's enough trust that you just can kind of assume that that person isn't going to use it. And, and then, so you forget. Do you know Lindsey Halligan well enough for her to make an assumption that she could just assume you're off the record?

[Anna Bauer]

No, I, I mean, I want to be very clear about this because I, I, and I haven't not even looked at the reaction to the story yet. But I just, in case there are people who are wondering, like, oh, did they have some kind of off the record relationship that, you know, isn't being disclosed here or something? No. Quite literally, the only time I've ever spoken to Lindsay hall again in my life was the time I ran into her in the restaurant three years ago.

[Ben Wittes]

So this is like you run into somebody in a restaurant and then three years later you text them sensitive stuff out of nowhere and you expect confidentiality.

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah. And you're the most high profile prosecutor in the country who is already the subject of immense scrutiny. You, you know that there are, at least in the case against Comey. We weren't talking about that case here. But in that case, you already know there's selective and vindictive prosecution motions that are on their way. I believe that those were due today, although I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. And you think, and you probably think it's very likely that that's going to happen in the Letitia James case, too. And there are reasons, Ben, why prosecutors are really hesitant to make public comments about ongoing prosecutions, because already of the reasons we've stated, but there are things like, you know, pretrial publicity motions or, you know, a variety of other ways that defense counsel can use these kinds of missteps and incidents as ammo. And if you're already the subject of, you know, much criticism and, you know, that kind of thing, and you know that the defense is looking for whatever they can to put into those kinds of motions, then you would think you'd be Especially careful. And that's just not what happened here.

[Ben Wittes]

Yeah. So you and I, after a draft of this was completed, one of our editors read it and said, you know, how do we know that this kind of communication isn't actually much more common than we understand? And I kind of had an intuitive sense. Yeah. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've never heard of an interaction like this. I've never, I've never met a prosecutor who, you know, who's just, you know, described having such an interaction. I've never met or described anybody else having such an interaction. I've never heard a journalist talk about a prosecutor. You know, people get reps, right. This person's really forward leaning and press stuff. Never heard of somebody doing something like this. But we decided, okay, let's spend the weekend talking to people on both sides of this relationship and just get a sense of. I don't want to, we're not going to talk about who we spoke to, but we talked to a fair diversity of people on both the prosecutorial and the Justice Department reporting side of the thing. Fair to say that this. Nobody could cite an example of something like this, right?

[Anna Bauer]

No, no one could cite an example of something like this. And of course, everyone like, like we have been. Everyone pointed out as far. Or a lot of people that we spoke to pointed out things like, oh, well, yeah, that, you know, contacts between prosecutors and reporters do happen. You and I both know that, you know, and, and as you point out.

[Ben Wittes]

I have met people as a reporter who are deeply involved in lawfare today, and I met them when they were prosecutors.

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah.

[Ben Wittes]

And I don't think there was, I don't think there was anything inappropriate about those contacts either from the prosecutorial side. As a journalist, it is proper for there to be contacts. It is not proper, proper or normal for there to be contacts on active investigative matters outside of the normal. I mean, you know what the propriety line is. You can debate, but there's a caution about stuff that involves pending cases, active matters, grand juries, you know, things that, that implicate investigative or privacy equities.

[Anna Bauer]

Yeah, exactly. And, and no one that we spoke to could point to a similar example or having heard of, heard of something like this or having experienced something like this. I will add to that in the time since we've published the story, you know, I've gotten feedback from other legal journalists, other former officials who we didn't speak to in advance of publishing the story, who also had the reaction of, wow, and, and I asked them you know, have you ever seen anything like this? And they're like, no, this is wild. You know, so that's kind of the gist of. Obviously, you know, it's, it varies people's reactions, but the, the gist of it is that people have not seen something like this. I certainly had not before now.

[Ben Wittes]

One more question and then we'll let you go. So one of the weird things about this interaction is this sense that on her part, which seems to go back to your first meeting, that, you know, you kind of have to sit there while she whines about your integrity as a journalist. You know, like she doesn't like the way you covered the stuff with her and Jim trustee in Florida and she doesn't like the, your tweets. She really doesn't seem to like you very much and I, I hope that doesn't bother you too much.

[Anna Bauer]

Why.

[Ben Wittes]

But yet she feels sort of intimate enough with you or connected enough to reach out. And so I'm just curious for your sense of what she thinks your relationship is.

[Anna Bauer]

Ben, I, I have, honestly, I have no idea. I mean, yeah, I don't want to over, you know, speculate or psychoanalyze, so I honestly have no idea. I just can't speak to it.

[Ben Wittes]

I, at one point in the thing, yeah, the New York Times got it wrong, but I expect that of them. I didn't expect it of you. It's the first, like she's never said a nice thing about you or to you. Like, where did this expectation come from?

[Anna Bauer]

Frankly, again, I don't know. I mean, look like I, you know, I think she had just joined the Trump criminal team around the time that I started reporting on those cases. You know, we're both 30 something year old women who have kind of are in these like, I mean, very different, thrown into extraordinary circumstances kind of thing. She joins the former President's criminal team. I'm covering it. Maybe there was some, again, this all just feels so speculative that it, it's, I have no idea. But you know, maybe, maybe there's just something of, you know, it's, it's someone that you've met, although briefly. You, you feel while you're in this situation that you've been thrust into that it's someone that, you know, you want to reach out to. For some reason, I really can't speak to it. I don't know. But, but what I will say is that I, you know, I think it's interesting because at times she seemed to suggest that she expected a lot of me Or a lot more of me. But then at other times, more of you.

[Ben Wittes]

Anna, you've disappointed her.

[Anna Bauer]

But, but then at other times, if it was really unclear to me if she, if she had ever even read, you know, what I, what kind of reporting I do, because, you know, my reporting is not accessed based, you know, I'm not a reporter who's really trying to get the, you know, access based scoop or, you know, whatever. That's just not the core of my work. Although it is sometimes a part of my work where I talk to sources and, you know, get information. But really I'm going to court and reporting on the proceedings. And a lot of my work is based on public records and documents. And it seemed to me that, you know, one point she encouraged me to out compete other media outlets, you know, find my own sources. But that suggests to me that there's not really much of an understanding of what kind of reporting and work I actually do. And then she came back around and said that I'm not in fact a journalist. So I don't know, we'll see. Maybe, maybe one day Lindsey Halligan and I'll sit down for an off the record conversation and we'll find out.

[Ben Wittes]

Well, so the last line of your piece in the epilogue is that you're going to text her a link to the story. Have you done that yet?

[Anna Bauer]

I have not. I'm going to do it right now. Whenever we get off of this phone call.

[Ben Wittes]

We're going to do that right now. Anna, it's been a long week. Get some rest. And, and if Lindsey Halligan sends you any thoughts on the piece, you know, make sure she knows what basis she starts speaking on.

[Anna Bauer]

All right, thanks.

[Ben Wittes]

This conversation is part of lawfare's new live stream series, Lawfare Live. The now subscribe to Lawfare YouTube and Substack to receive an alert the next time we go live. The Lawfare podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events, events and other content available only to our supporters. The podcast is edited by Goat Rodeo and our audio engineer. This episode was the incomparable Anna Hickey of lawfare. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.

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